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Seat Belt Defect Attorneys in Pennsylvania

"Seatbelts save lives;" "Click it or ticket." We’ve all heard the slogans and seen the campaigns urging drivers to wear seatbelts. Seatbelts are one of the most important and effective safety features vehicles have that can prevent serious injury or death. When properly used, seatbelts can reduce the risk of fatal injury by 45%, and can reduce the risk of critical injury by 50%. In a motor vehicle collision, your car may crash into a barrier, other vehicle, or pedestrian, resulting in damage to your vehicle. Injuries to drivers and passengers occur, however, during what is referred to as the 'second collision,' when an individual strikes interior vehicle components like the steering wheel, dashboard, windshield, or when someone is ejected from the vehicle. Seatbelts restrain passengers to avoid a second collision or to lessen injuries from second collisions. But what happens when seat belts fail and actually injure you or a loved one?

Seatbelts work in several different ways. During a Philadelphia car accident, a car usually decelerates, or slows down, very quickly, but your body wants to keep moving forward. A seatbelt holds your body to the seat, and prevents you from flying forward, though the windshield, reducing your risk of serious injury. Three-point harness systems offer greater safety protection than lap belts alone, which do not prevent your head from moving forward in a crash, potentially slamming into the steering wheel. Most seatbelts have retractor systems, where the seatbelt material, or webbing, is connected to a spool that winds up any loose webbing and adjusts to the size of each passenger. In the event of a car accident, a retractor locking system is engaged, by either the car’s movement or the seatbelt’s movement, preventing the seatbelt webbing from letting out any slack. The locking mechanism holds passengers firmly against their seat, and prevents them from moving forward. Some seatbelt systems use a pretensioner along with a retractor and locking mechanism. Whereas a retractor & locking system will prevent any more webbing from being released from the seatbelt spool, a pretensioner will actually pull webbing back into the spool, and wind up any slack in the seatbelt during a car accident. Pretensioners are usually triggered by the same sensors that a vehicle’s airbag is triggered by.

Causes of seatbelt failures include:

Faulty material used for the seatbelt webbing, resulting in tearing
Poor or defective design: mounting the seatbelt anchor to the car ceiling, which could break or bend in the event of a vehicle rollover
Manufacturing and assembly errors and defects
Accidental or inertial unlatching of the buckle: flying objects or body parts (like your elbow) can unlock buckle, or the sheer force of the collision can cause buckle to unlatch
False latch: when a latch plate looks, feels and sounds as though it has been inserted into the buckle, but the lock is not actually secured and a slight amount of force will unlatch the seatbelt
Seatbelts detaching from their anchor points and mount
Retractor error causing too much slack, or spooling out
Lack of or failure of seatbelt pretensioner
Lack of three-point harness, or lap belt only design (typically found in older model vehicles)

Seatbelt defects and failures can cause catastrophic and often fatal injuries, changing an innocent victim’s life forever. The most common injuries resulting from seatbelt failure are to the neck and head, to the chest, and to the arms and legs, which can result in permanent disability. When a seatbelt fails to restrain someone in a head-on collision, the person can be catapulted forward through the windshield and ejected from the car, resulting in catastrophic and fatal injuries. People who are ejected from their vehicle during an auto collision are more likely to sustain spinal cord and neck injuries resulting in paralysis, paraplegia, quadriplegia, or death. Seatbelt defects can also cause strangulation when there is too much slack in the belt, like when a retractor fails or if a car is not equipped with a pretensioner system.

Every year auto manufacturers issue thousands of vehicle recalls for faulty or defective seatbelts. Over 8 million vehicles have been recalled for using Takata seatbelts, which have a danger of unlatching and failing to lock properly. Takata seatbelts have been used by Honda, Mazda, Ford, Mitsubishi, Subaru, General Motors, Chrysler, and others. Similarly the Gen3 seatbelt, used in millions of Chrysler vehicles, has been cited in hundreds of claims of inadvertent unlatching or accidental release, and has been linked to at least 26 deaths.

If you or a loved one has been injured as the result of a failing seatbelt, or you believe a manufacturing defect or flawed seatbelt design caused injuries to you or a loved one, the experienced Pennsylvania auto product liability attorneys and Philadelphia seatbelt defect lawyers of Reiff & Bily can help you determine who is at fault for your injuries. Our team of highly experienced attorneys and seatbelt defect experts is firmly committed to advocating for your rights and protection as consumers, and we believe safety should always be an auto manufacturer’s top priority. You may be entitled to financial compensation to help you with medical bills, pain and suffering, lost wages, and rehabilitation costs if we discover a seatbelt defect or failure caused or aggravated your injuries. For over 30 years, we have successfully represented catastrophically injured victims who were injured due to defective products, and have successfully litigated against some of the world’s top auto manufacturers to recover hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of our catastrophically injured or wrongfully killed clients and their families.

Seat Belt Defect Attorneys in Pennsylvania

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